Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

De­vel­op­ment of the Eco-friend­ly Busi­ness Sec­tor (Scrap Iron)

2.114 By mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed 05/09/2023, the Min­istry has ad­vised that an over­seas pay­ment of US$26,000.00 was made on 10/07/2023 to a com­pa­ny lo­cat­ed in In­done­sia for the pur­chase of four laser analy­sers for use by the Scrap Met­al In­spec­tors.

2.115 Nu­mer­ous at­tempts were made to con­tact this com­pa­ny for the ex­pect­ed date of de­liv­ery of items but there was no re­sponse. This com­pa­ny’s web­site can no longer be found on the in­ter­net. To date, the Min­istry has been un­able to se­cure the items from the sup­pli­er nor re­cov­er the pay­ment made. At the time of au­dit, the items had still not been re­ceived.

2.116 A re­port of this loss was sub­mit­ted to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

—Ex­tract from the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port for the fi­nan­cial year Oc­to­ber 1, 2022, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023.

MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (MIC) chair­man Pro­fes­sor Clement Im­bert says due dili­gence was done by the in­sti­tu­tion in the pro­cure­ment of four laser analy­sers for scrap met­al in­spec­tors on be­half of the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try (MTI).

How­ev­er, de­spite this, a firm be­lieved to be based in In­done­sia which was paid US$26,000 (ac­cord­ing to MTI the equiv­a­lent was TT$176,628.40 at the time) for the equip­ment has van­ished and nei­ther the MIC nor the min­istry or the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice can con­tact the firm, nor can it be found on­line.

Im­bert told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that while due dili­gence was done in the pro­cure­ment, that MIC had not used the com­pa­ny be­fore.

It was the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try Ran­dall Karim who made a po­lice re­port and alert­ed the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, af­ter he be­came aware of the mat­ter short­ly af­ter he be­came PS.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a bun­dle of doc­u­ments which were sub­mit­ted to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher for ad­vice and in­ter­ven­tion in the mat­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, Hitech In­dus­try in­voiced the min­istry for four units, each at US$6,5000 per unit, for a to­tal of US$26,000.

The in­voice said that ship­ping, in­sur­ance and VAT were free and that the units would be de­liv­ered by couri­er com­pa­ny DHL with­in three to four days of pay­ments be­ing re­ceived.

It was signed by a di­rec­tor, Supri Agus Hariy­ono, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion was done through a gen­er­al man­ag­er, Niluh Rat­na­di.

When MIC sent the bank­ing in­for­ma­tion to the min­istry, it was in the name of the gen­er­al man­ag­er Rat­na­di and not the com­pa­ny sup­ply­ing the equip­ment.

De­spite this anom­aly, the min­istry au­tho­rised the pay­ment to the com­pa­ny.

In March 2023, dur­ing a Scrap Met­al Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Work­shop, MIC rec­om­mend­ed the use of Hand­held Laser In­duced Break­down Spec­troscopy (LIBS) Analy­sers by Scrap Met­al In­spec­tors em­ployed by the min­istry while con­duct­ing in­spec­tion du­ties.

The min­istry then re­quest­ed the as­sis­tance of the MIC, giv­en their ex­pe­ri­ence in the area, to source sup­pli­ers and quo­ta­tions for pro­cure­ment of the analy­sers.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od March 10-13, 2023, the MIC re­quest­ed quo­ta­tions from the man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers of these de­vices.

Based on the cri­te­ria of their search (See Box), the MIC rec­om­mend­ed HiTech In­dus­try, Inc. for the ac­qui­si­tion of four (4) Rigaku KT-100s Hand­held LIBS Analy­sers, not­ing that “it is the cheap­est price and gives the best war­ran­ty”.

On May 3, 2023, the MTI com­menced its pro­cure­ment process for the pur­chase of the four analy­sers.

On May 9, 2023 mem­bers of the MTI’s Pro­cure­ment Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee met to eval­u­ate the pro­pos­als/quo­ta­tions re­ceived from the four com­pa­nies and de­ter­mined that HiTech In­dus­try Inc. was the first ranked bid­der.

With the rec­om­men­da­tion by the MIC to the min­istry, the min­istry in turn sought fund­ing from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

On May 24, 2023, the min­istry re­ceived a dis­burse­ment to cov­er the pur­chase of the equip­ment.

On May 29, 2023, a pur­chase or­der was pre­pared to HiTech. Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, on May 31, 2023, the pur­chase or­der was trans­mit­ted via email to Hen­dri­co Sama­di, a sales man­ag­er at HiTech In­dus­try who was com­mu­ni­cat­ing to MIC on the sale.

On June 1, 2023, Sama­di trans­mit­ted the or­der in­voice which pro­vid­ed pay­ment de­tails.

The min­istry trans­mit­ted a Re­quest for Pay­ment through the Cen­tral Bank of Over­seas Mis­sion to the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion.

The ben­e­fi­cia­ry’s name was Rat­na­di, through the Bank Cen­tral Asia, with the ad­dress in Jakar­ta, In­done­sia.

On June 28, 2023, the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion in­di­cat­ed pay­ments were not made di­rect­ly to In­done­sia and re­quest­ed in­ter­me­di­ary bank­ing in­for­ma­tion in or­der to process the pay­ment trans­ac­tion.

An email re­quest­ing this in­for­ma­tion was sent to Sama­di and on June 30, 2023, he pro­vid­ed JP Mor­gan Chase Bank in New York as the in­ter­me­di­ary bank.

On Ju­ly 3, 2023, a Re­quest for Pay­ment was re-sub­mit­ted to the Trea­sury Di­vi­sion.

On Ju­ly 7, 2023, a wire trans­fer pay­ment was is­sued to Rat­na­di in the amount of US$26,000, equiv­a­lent to TT$176, 628.40. On the same date, the min­istry re­ceived an email from Sama­di en­quir­ing about the pay­ment sched­ule and the min­istry in­di­cat­ed that pay­ment was in process.

On Ju­ly 12, 2023, the min­istry con­tact­ed Sama­di to en­quire whether pay­ment was re­ceived but Sama­di in­di­cat­ed pay­ment had not been re­ceived and re­quest­ed a copy of proof of pay­ment.

On Ju­ly 31, 2023, an email was sent to Sama­di to in­di­cate that the MTI re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion that pay­ment was suc­cess­ful.

The min­istry re­quest­ed that Sama­di con­firm re­ceipt of pay­ment and pro­vide de­tails on de­liv­ery of the analy­sers.

Af­ter that, all com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the min­istry and HiTech stopped.

Guardian Me­dia was told that while the fault lay with MIC and their due dili­gence in the pro­cure­ment, there was lit­tle that could be done to re­cov­er the mon­ey since the com­pa­ny and its ven­dors have dis­ap­peared.

Ear­li­er this month, when Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal raised the mat­ter be­fore the fi­nal Au­di­tor’s Gen­er­al re­port was laid last Fri­day, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon had an­swered, “These pieces of equip­ment were pro­cured by the Met­al In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny on be­half of the MTI to as­sist Scrap Met­al In­spec­tors in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of met­als un­der the new Scrap Met­al Regime. Since then, the in­spec­tors have re­ceived spe­cialised train­ing and are able to iden­ti­fy the dif­fer­ent types of scrap met­al, and are per­form­ing their re­quired func­tions. The po­lice (are) con­duct­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

(BOX)

How MIC did the pro­cure­ment

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, the MIC used the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria for se­lec­tion of sup­pli­ers of the LIBS de­vice:

1. Sort­ing of fer­rous and no-fer­rous ma­te­ri­als

2. Hand­held – portable

3. For use out in the field – ex­po­sure to wa­ter & dust (not on­ly for use in a lab en­vi­ron­ment)

4. Min­i­mum to no op­er­a­tor train­ing

5. Pos­i­tive ma­te­r­i­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion

It said through In­ter­net search­es, the fol­low­ing de­vices were found:

1. Hi­tachi – LIBS (laser-in­duced break­down spec­troscopy) Analyser: Vul­can Ex­pert Hand­held Analyser

2. Ni­ton Apol­lo LIBS Analyser

3. Van­ta C se­ries XRF Analyser

4. Rigaku KT-100S Hand­held Analyser

5. Vela Portable LIBS Analyser

From the four com­pa­nies from which it got in­voic­es, it rec­om­mend­ed HiTech In­dus­try Inc to the Min­istry of Trade as the first-ranked bid­der.